“They’re growing up,” Paisley, 41, told PEOPLE Monday at the taping of The Night That Changed America: A Grammy Salute to the Beatles, which airs Feb. 9 on CBS. “I see so much of me [in them].”

Paisley, who has two sons, Huck, 6½, and Jasper Warren, 4½, with his wife, former Nashville star Kimberly Williams-Paisley, has had to learn not to be an over-bearing parent as his boys continue to grow up.

“It’s hard not to tell your kids, ‘Don’t do that. I’ve made that mistake,'” Paisley said before performing the Beatles hit, “Here Comes the Sun,” on stage with Pharrell Williams. “You can tell them that all you want, but you’ve got to let them do it.”